Worship pioneer Robert Webber dies

Robert Webber, one of the most influential figures in Christian worship during the past half century, died April 27 of pancreatic cancer in his home in Sawyer, Michigan. He was 73.

The author of more than 40 books on worship, Webber taught at Wheaton College in Illinois from 1968 to 2000, retiring as professor emeritus. That same year he took an endowed chair in ministry at Northern Baptist Seminary in Lombard, Illinois.

Webber was best known in recent years for his emphasis on “ancient-future worship”—an effort to infuse contemporary and emergent worship with the liturgical practices of the premodern church.

In the 1985 book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Webber described his own gradual shift from his fundamentalist roots to the Anglican tradition. In 1998 he founded the Institute for Worship Studies (now bearing his name), hosted by Grace Episcopal Church of Orange Park, Florida.